Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/414

Sharp quarrel between the two parties, and to prevent the possibility of their common action. At the same time, the letter, as Sharp explained to the episcopalian nobles, bound the king to nothing, ‘for his confirming their government as it was established by law could bind him no longer than while that legal establishment was in force’ (ib. p. 75).

For a considerable time Sharp continued to act ostensibly as the representative of the resolutioners, while the main work given him to perform by the king was that of lulling presbyterian suspicion. Thus, when, by the act declaring illegal all leagues with any other nation made without the king's authority, the league and covenant made with England in 1643 was set aside as of no force for the future, Sharp explained to those whom he professed to represent that for the presbyterians to submit quietly to the act was the best way to gain their ends, as they would thus extinguish the jealousy which, on account of the covenant, the king might entertain towards them. By plausible and dexterous manœuvring he succeeded in preventing any representation being made to the king on behalf of the preservation of presbyterianism, and while assuring the king that it was only from the protesters that serious opposition to episcopacy was to be expected—the great body of the resolutioners being either lukewarm or really episcopalians—he afterwards excused himself for betraying his trust on the ground that no effort of his could have prevented the introduction of episcopacy. This, no doubt, was true; and it is also true that he occasionally in his letters dropped hints as to the king's preference, but these were mainly made with a view of showing the necessity of acting with prudence and forbearance. No doubt also Sharp, like many others who changed at this time to episcopacy, never was a zealous presbyterian. He had previously, it may be, merely submitted to it, and longed for an opportunity to cast it off. At any rate, believing that it was now doomed, he resolved to do the best for himself he could under the new régime; and, apparently acting on the maxim that all is fair in ecclesiastical politics, he seems to have had no scruples in playing what was beyond doubt a double part. The important service he had rendered to Monck and the king, and not less his diplomatic skill and strong personality, marked him out for high promotion. Meanwhile he was named his majesty's chaplain in Scotland, with a salary of 200l. per annum, and on 16 Jan. 1661 he was appointed professor of divinity in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews. After the rising of the parliament of 1661, by which episcopacy was established, he was nominated archbishop of St. Andrews, and on 15 Dec. he and three other Scottish bishops were solemnly consecrated at Westminster. In May 1662 ten other bishops were consecrated, the framework of the new ecclesiastical system being thus finally completed. Leighton, the mild and saintly bishop of Dunblane, told Burnet that he made to Sharp a proposal for uniting the presbyterians and episcopalians, according to the scheme of Archbishop Ussher, and was ‘amazed when he observed that Sharp had neither formed any scheme nor seemed so much as willing to talk of any’ (Own Time, p. 93). Indeed, instead of this, he began to prepare the way for the extinction of presbyterianism by issuing a proclamation forbidding clergymen to meet as a presbytery or other judicatory until the bishops should settle a method of proceeding in them (ib.) Having gone to London in 1664 to complain of the want of vigour and spirit in the administration, he returned, invested with ‘the title and style of primate of Scotland,’ the first place being also assigned him at the privy council. No doubt he was convinced, and rightly so, that the scheme proposed by the amiable Leighton could never be more than a dream. It was quite impossible that in Scotland episcopalians and presbyterians could now dwell together in unity; and episcopacy, he clearly realised, could never be regarded as secure while presbytery was even tolerated. Thus, partly from the determination to discharge to the best of his ability the duties of the office he had undertaken, partly from the knowledge that only thus could he establish himself in power and in the king's favour, partly probably from a sincere contempt for the peculiar fanaticism of the kirk, he hesitated at no severity in enforcing the annihilation of covenanting principles.

Such extreme zeal in one who had not merely been a prominent leader in the kirk, but who, having been entrusted with the special mission of representing its views to the king, had been the main agent in betraying it, naturally aroused against him, among the extreme covenanters, an almost unspeakable hate. On 9 July 1668 he was shot at with a pistol in the High Street, Edinburgh, by James Mitchell, who, after escaping capture for several years, was ultimately executed in 1678 [see or ]. Mitchell's execution intensified the antipathy to Sharp; and moreover the covenanters had gradually been roused into resistance and into acts of repri-